Now we know a bit about Dr. Coe and Messrs. Hay and McClure ("What's in a Name?," June 1), but Magnolians might wonder: What about Mrs. Blaine and Gen. Lawton? Here's that scoop.
Catharine Blaine School (K-8), 2550 34th Avenue West
Opened 1952, named for Catharine P. Blaine (1829-1908)
Catharine Paine was born in 1829 in Seneca Falls, N.Y., the site of the world's first women's-rights convention. She was one of 240 signers of the Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions that launched the National Woman Suffrage Association.
She married Rev. David Blaine, a Methodist missionary. They came to Seattle in 1853 as participants in a major New England evangelical movement. They traveled by ship and on mules over the Isthmus of Panama, arriving at Alki Point in November of that year. They were paddled from Alki to Seattle, where they stayed their first several weeks in the two-room cabin of Mary and Arthur Denny.
Many considered the Blaines eastern effetes. The young couple, in turn, were offended by the rowdiness of other settlers. Catharine especially was disturbed by the habits and living conditions of the local Indians. In letters home she expressed disdain for them all.
But the Blaines immediately set to work and made significant contributions to the life of early Seattle - he in religion, she in education.
Soon after the Blaines' arrival, neighbors collected money to employ Catharine as a schoolteacher at $65 a month. She began teaching in January 1854 in the Latimer Building at First and Cherry, in what is now downtown Seattle. The next year the school moved around the block to the Blaines' new house on Second Avenue between Cherry and Columbia streets.
Classes were held Tuesday through Saturday, because Monday was Catharine's wash day.
In 1856 Catharine gave birth to a son, John. The Battle of Seattle erupted six days after he was born. This Indian uprising confirmed the Blaines' worst fears and prejudices. About a year later the family left for missionary duties in Portland.
Decades later, in 1882, the Blaines retired in Seattle, after it had grown into a real town, but they did not participate in local affairs.
Though intolerant in some ways, Catharine Blaine was ahead of her time in others. Catharine Blaine School was so named because she was the first teacher in Seattle.
Lawton Elementary School, 4000 27th Ave. W.
Opened 1908 , named for Gen. Henry Ware Lawton (1843-1899)
Born in 1843 in Manhattan, Ohio, and raised in Indiana, Henry Ware Lawton joined the army at the beginning of the Civil War as a sergeant in the 9th Indiana Infantry; he had not yet turned 18. During the war he was commissioned, and by its end he was discharged as a lieutenant colonel.
He rejoined the army in 1867 and served throughout the so-called Indian Wars. In the spring of 1886, he led a select group of troops into Mexico in pursuit of Geronimo. They captured the Apache chief three months later.
At the beginning of the Spanish-American War in the spring of 1898, Lawton - by then a general - was sent to Cuba, where he distinguished himself by capturing El Caney and providing support for Teddy Roose-velt and his Rough Riders when they charged San Juan Hill.
Toward the end of the war Lawton was sent to the Philippines. He arrived in Manila in March 1899 and began fighting insurgents. After several military successes, he was killed in December of that year at the Battle of San Mateo by the forces of a Filipino in-surgent named, ironically, Licerio Geronimo.
Lawton, Okla., incorporated in 1901, was named for Gen. Lawton. The city is near Fort Sill, an army post where the Apache chief Geronimo spent his last years as a prisoner and where he was buried when he died.
Locally, another army post was named Fort Lawton, in Discovery Park on Magnolia. The school got its name from its proximity to the post.
The history lesson is over. School is dismissed for the summer!
Correction: In the June 1 article about the origin of the names of Queen Anne's public schools, Coe School's address should have been 2424 Seventh Ave. W. When the school was rebuilt, its address was changed to that of its front entrance, not its back.
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